Making green mac & cheese
I can use food skills to make green mac & cheese, making a roux sauce.
Making green mac & cheese
I can use food skills to make green mac & cheese, making a roux sauce.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- Different pasta, vegetables and cheeses can be used. Cheese is made from milk, which can be from a cow, sheep or goat.
- Recipes can be modified to help meet healthy eating messages, such as using reduced fat cheese and adding extra veg.
- Starch granules in flour swell and thicken when in liquid and heated, a process called gelatinisation.
- The food skills used to make mac & cheese are measuring, grating, slicing, using the hob and grill and draining.
- Home-cooked and shop-bought dishes can be compared, such as cost, food skills, convenience, taste and health.
Keywords
Macaroni - a type of pasta, sometimes shortened to ‘mac’
Gelatinisation - the process of thickening a mixture of starch (flour) in liquid when heated
Roux sauce - a classic French sauce, made with butter, flour and milk
Common misconception
A roux sauce can have all the liquid (milk) added at the same time, and whisked occasionally.
A roux sauce must have the liquid (milk) added gradually, and the sauce should be whisked continually to prevent lumps.
To help you plan your year 8 cooking and nutrition lesson on: Making green mac & cheese, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 8 cooking and nutrition lesson on: Making green mac & cheese, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 3 cooking and nutrition lessons from the Cooking techniques and proficiency unit, dive into the full secondary cooking and nutrition curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
For ingredients and equipment, see the recipe in additional materials.
Content guidance
- Risk assessment required - may contain allergens
- Risk assessment required - equipment
Supervision
Adult supervision required
Licence
Lesson video
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Starter quiz
6 Questions
grate cheese
stir-fry vegetables
cook fishcakes
dice an onion
drain pasta
Exit quiz
5 Questions
draining pasta
boiling and simmering the sauce
whisking the sauce
grating cheese
measuring milk
using a reduced fat cheese
using wholemeal pasta
adding more veg and/or beans
adding fish, such as tuna or mackerel